India should redesign its public safety signs to save lives

Mind studies suggest that the use of photographs depicting fear could trigger safe behaviour

- BIJU DOMINIC

Imagine you are walking on railway tracks on a bridge across a river and you see a train fast approaching on those tracks. You would be extremely lucky if you have time to rush inside one of the refuge bays by the side of the tracks on railway bridges. Otherwise, the consequences would surely be fatal. One such fatal accident took place last week on the Bharathapuzha bridge near Shoranur Junction railway station in Kerala. Four contract labourers hired for cleaning railway tracks were hit by an oncoming train on this bridge.

With railway lines criss-crossing the length and breadth of India, track trespasser deaths are a daily occurrence in India. According to reports, in 2023, there were as many as 1,357 deaths on railway tracks in Kerala alone. There has been a 32% increase in such deaths over the 2022 toll.

One might be tempted to turn a blind eye towards this problem as these fatalities take place because of an illegal activity: trespassing on railway property. But the truth is that as the population density around railway tracks increases, people spilling onto these lines becomes an inevitability. So, trespasser deaths will continue to rise in India. What can be done at least to mitigate this mortality?

I have had the fortune of interacting with many officials of the Indian Railways who were very keen to mitigate the problem of trespassing accidents on railway tracks. This gave me an opportunity to study the problem of trespassing in depth.